The Darkest Darkness
by Jon Sorensen
Summary: A short story about a priest of the Divines gripped by a profound spiritual crisis, in Skyrim shaken by a civil war, at the rise of a darkness that may yet devour the entire world.


**The Darkest Darkness**

* * *

For a profoundly empty universe, it could sure be a noisy place at times.

There were only two of them in the midsize military tent at the moment, yet their half-inebriated prattling was enough to drown out any coherent thought in Faelmir's head. Not that he'd had many of those as of late. He tried shooting them a dirty glare, but of course they paid him no mind, sitting alone in the corner as he was.

A metaphor for his entire reality, if there ever was one.

Be that as it may, the soldiers were certainly taking it easy, swigging beers and shooting dice, despite being on duty. And in the middle of a war no less. It didn't exactly appear as if the fate of the Imperial power in Skyrim rested in very sure hands.

Not that such things mattered to him.

"Ah, you cheat!" grunted the one with blond hair curling about the temples; Ceno, his name. He had a weak chin and a peculiarly small nose and ears.

The other guy, Matius, a handsome fellow with a large and well-formed skull with all the hair shaved off it, gave a wide grin. "Oh, I do, I _do_ ," he said. "Cheating on your sister, that is. With your mother, now that we're fessing up."

"My mother's dead, you depraved sack of shit!"

Matius replied with a raised eyebrow and a sly, one-sided smirk.

"Ech!" Ceno waved his hand at his smug-looking comrade. "You're a sick man, Matius."

Matius shrugged. "That's how she likes it."

Ceno simply shook his head in silence, placing a handful of coin on the table, which the handsome fellow then raked into his own pocket.

"Cheers!" Matius said.

Then they went back to their futile gambling. On and on it would go. One of them would win, get the gold passed to him over the table. Soon enough that same gold would be sliding right back to where it came from. And in the end they would both lose.

Faelmir wanted to sigh, but that would have been pointless. He was here to serve as the spiritual counsel for the troops fighting for the peace of the Empire. To act as the representative of the Divines here on the troubled and turbulent tribulation of Nirn where every day was wrought with uncertainly and toil. To bring the light and love of the gods among the troubled. Not once had anyone asked him about that stuff. The only time he'd heard the Divines mentioned had been in curses. And, to be perfectly honest, had he been asked, he did not know what he might have said.

" _There actually are no Divines_ ," his old mentor Prior Acilius once told him. " _For there's really only one divinity, but one with many faces. Not even that, really, as they're not so much faces as they are simply perspectives: angles from which we mortals look at one ultimately indivisible whole_."

From where Faelmir was looking at it, he'd never seen any _faces_ at all _,_ his _perspectives_ had left him utterly at a stage of loss and confusion, and the way he was presently angled, he felt as if he was torn into a hundred incompatible pieces, which had never formed anything resembling a whole in the first place.

 _Everywhere I look_ , he thought, _all I see is the face of my incompetence; everything a reflection of my own failure._

Before his budding trickle of self-pity had the proper chance to burgeon into a roaring river of rueful wallowing, it was cut short by another soldier trooping into the tent. This one had close-cropped jet hair and an overall battered appearance. Looked like he might have been born with aristocratic features but then had gotten them beaten out of him over the years.

Matius looked up from the pair of dice—judging by his smirk—favorable to him. "Scipio, back so soon! Though you might have just made an excuse to bail out while you still have some of your Septims!"

Ceno smirked with the other man, but Scipio simply scoffed and then sat down with them.

"So," said Ceno, "see any Stormcloaks?"

Scipio snorted. "Yeah, sure. There was one hiding in the shrubs, and he kindly offered to shake it for me. I just pissed right on his face, and he ran out."

"You let him get away? Now he'll run to Ulfric and let him know about our secret weapon!"

"Don't worry," Matius said. Both him and Ceno were wearing stupid little grins. "He won't get far before the stuff will eat its way into his brain."

"Hey," Scipio exclaimed, "don't blame me; blame this stuff they give us." He lifted a bottle of beer in front of him, drained the rest in it and tossed the bottle aside. He didn't appear to suffer too badly from it.

The other men took sips of their own bottles, and then there was some attempt at choral belching.

Now Faelmir did shake his head a little. Men lived such short lives, he reflected, they simply never had the time to grow up.

"Hey, did you hear about that execution back in Solitude yesterday?" Ceno asked.

"Nope," muttered Scipio.

"Can't say I have," echoed Matius, shaking his head.

Didn't appear that they cared too much one way or another.

Ceno frowned, visibly peeved that his chosen topic received such lack of enthusiasm. "Well, they did," he said testily. "Some Nord Guard, allegedly the same person who let Ulfric escape Solitude once he'd done in the High King. Ragnar or something."

"Is that so?" said Scipio, his curiosity seeming kindled a touch.

Ceno nodded, wearing an expression like he was proud to be the bearer of such a delicious rumor. "That's so," he confirmed. "First time in a long time they took the head of a traitor. About time, I say. Huh?" He looked around at his comrades, expecting to be met with some enthusiasm. When he failed to receive it, he seemed to suffer something of a sullen deflation.

Scipio looked pensive. "I don't know about that; I've actually heard they beheaded another fellow just last year. Some Imperial. Treason as well, I believe."

Ceno looked none too happy about this; as if this other executed poor bastard would have somehow depreciated the value of his man. "No, can't be."

"No, no," insisted Scipio, "I hear this from a reputable source."

"Actually," started Matius, who so far had not shown too much interest in the subject, "I've heard that too, and my source says the other fellow walked free."

"Which one?" the other two men asked in unison.

"The one last year. The Imperial."

"No," Scipio protested, " _you'v_ e got it wrong. I hear they were going to execute him first, then let him go—"

"That's what I—"

Scipio interrupted the other soldier's argument with an upheld hand. "And then," he continued, "they took him back and _then_ they executed him." He looked at least as pleased as Ceno had just a minute ago.

This time Faelmir rolled his eyes. These children . . .

Matius shook his head defiantly. "Nuh-uh, They let him go the second time as well, I hear."

"They didn't," claimed Scipio.

"They did," insisted Matius.

There was a pregnant pause, the two disputers locked in a moody game of frowns and stares, neither one letting up.

"Well, who really gives a shit anyway?" said Ceno finally.

That compelling argument seemed to win both of the others to its side. Then it was back to rolling and swigging, and a very welcome relative silence set upon the tent.

Faelmir leaned back in his chair, warming his hands over the brazier blazing next to him. He looked at his hands, pale and long-fingered in a way typical to his race. But all he saw in them were the wrinkles, increasing year by trudging year. At least if he'd ever used his hands to accomplish anything— if he'd built something, helped to make the world a better place—then their rapidly progressing rugosity wouldn't have mattered; might have even served as a badge of honor of a kind.

But, as it stood, all he'd ever—

"Well _I_ heard," Matius proclaimed, cutting off Faelmir's inner monologue, "that they arrested old Stormcloak himself." His voice had at least an equivalent amount of pride as the others' had.

" _What_!" exclaimed Ceno. "They did?"

Matius nodded a reply.

"Then what are we doing here anymore?" Scipio asked, spreading his arms.

Matius shrugged. "They lost him again."

"They _did_?! What a bunch of incompetent—"

"Relax," Ceno calmed Scipio, "it's just a rumor, probably something Matius picked up off some floozy. I bet it's not even true."

Matius gave his friend a shrewd look. "How _much_ would you bet?"

Ceno stared across the table at his smirking comrade, pensively chewing on the side of his mouth.

Matius took a lean back on his chair. "It's true, I'm pretty sure. Supposedly it was a dragon that set him free. Like you already know, it was some sort of ancient dragonish call or something he used to tear the High King to pieces. So apparently he used it to call upon this dragon which swooped by to torch the town, and then flew away with Ulfric on its back"

A silence set upon them again. It was then broken by the nodding Scipio. "Yeah, I'll buy that. Sounds credible all around."

Ceno broke into a mirthful laughter, but Matius wore something of a defensive frown.

"What are you braying about? I could have happened."

"Oh, yeah. Sure." Ceno was wiping his eyes.

Scipio shook his head, then, to Faelmir's chagrin, turned his attention to the corner where he was trying to pretend being invisible. "How about you, priest?" he said. "What are your thoughts on the matter?"

All three heads turned to face him then.

"I'm sorry." Faelmir's his voice was cracking for the lack of use. "I wasn't listening," he lied.

"Do you believe a dragon might have come and set Ulfric free?" asked Matius, his expression like he was counting on the man of gods taking his side. Like dragons and gods were pretty much on par.

Faelmir wasn't sure he believed in either. "I've never seen a dragon," he said.

Matius did not look too happy about his reply, whereas Scipio nodded his approving head.

"Good reply," he said. "Very diplomatic."

" _Diplomatic_ doesn't quite cut it when a fucking dragon comes and burns you to the bone!" Matius protested. "Am I right? Huh? Huh?"

He didn't receive a very animated response from his comrades; in fact they seemed intent on ignoring him.

Unfortunately, though, they didn't seem to want to leave Faelmir be. "Why don't you join us?" Ceno called to him.

Faelmir tried to smile, not sure he had the hang of it anymore. "Oh thanks," he said. "But I'm rather busy."

"Busy?" Scipio scrutinized him sitting there with no visible activities besides sitting by the fire with his hands hovering above the brazier. "Doing what?"

"Thinking."

"What are you thinking about?" asked Matius, recovered now from his comrades' scorn.

"About Lorkhan, actually," Faelmir replied.

That's what he'd been _trying_ to think about, at least; though he'd been constantly distracted by noise—both inner and outer. But that had truly been the subject matter thinking which he'd originally set himself to do. About the god who created Mundus, the world. About how and, above all, _why_ he'd done it. Why indeed? What could have possibly prompted him to do such a nefarious thing?

Matius frowned."Who's Lorkhan?"

"Don't you know anything?" Scipio scolded. "He's the god supposedly created Mundus, right?" he was looking at Faelmir for confirmation, and got that in the form of a nod. "Yeah, he went missing or something?" He looked once again questionably at the priest.

"Something like that," admitted Faelmir. It would be a waste of breath to try to present a more complete account about the matter to these uneducated men.

"Missing?" Matius frowned. "Where can a god be hiding?"

Lorkhan, the scallywag of a god, according to the commonly accepted story, tricked the other Aedra—Magnus in particular—to create Mundus, to leak a big part of them into the newborn world, having a great part of their power trapped in it and thus giving up their divinity. As a punishment for his treachery Trinimac, the most powerful of the Aedra, tore Lorkhan's heart right out of his chest and plunged it down to Nirn.

So his "hiding" was nothing more than him being dead. He died so the world could exist. And thus he had also come to define the most absolute extreme form of "foolish" one could ever imagine.

Faelmir pasted on an uneasy expression. "It's . . . complicated."

Matius snored. "Yeah, I bet." He looked at his friends. "And you're telling me Ulfric riding a dragon sounds far-fetched?"

His friends were merely shrugging their shoulders, as if trying to shake the whole matter off. For a while it seemed like none of them had anything to add to the subject matter. They sipped from their bottles, getting ready for another round of dice. Faelmir started to hope they would let the whole matter drop, leave him alone to his solitary brooding.

Then it was Scipio to open his mouth. "It's a pretty interesting idea though, a missing god."

"I guess," muttered Matius, the picture of disinterest.

"My uncle went missing once," Ceno pitched in. "Said he'd drop by to buy some ale, and was never seen again. Though they did find a half-torn undefinable corpse floating belly-up in a river nearby. Couldn't say it was him, for sure, or even human at all. In any case, they just slung him into a hole, threw a bunch of dirt on top, and called it a dead relative."

After a moment of silence, Matius belched. "You tell a fascinating tale, Ceno."

"Oh yeah?" replied Ceno sharply. "Well, least I got a few not directly involving my cock!"

Matius' brows shot up. "A cock?" he said. "You've got one? Now I _am_ surprised!"

Anger flashed across Ceno's face, and it looked like he was going to make some incendiary rejoinder. But the scene was stolen by Scipio, who suddenly raised a warning hand while turning his ear toward the door. "Shh!"You hear that?"

Matius also tilted his head. He listened a while, then said, "Oh, is it a wren? It is! It's calling Ceno. Says it wants its prick back."

Ceno rolled his eyes, like he just decided that the other man's gibing was too immature to be offended by. "Seriously, Matius. If you were actually able to—"

"Shut up, you two twats!" Scipio hissed. "There's something out there."

They were all listening now. Even Faelmir cocked an uninterested ear to the direction the sound was supposed to have come from. At first he could hear nothing save for the trilling of crickets, the wind in the tree—and his merish ears were more accurate than those of these Imperials. He was just about to stop trying, file the whole fuss under sentinel paranoia, when he caught a faint noise like footsteps.

Scipio's face snapped in the direction of his comrades. "There, you hear that?"

Ceno shook his head.

"Maybe," Muttered Matius.

No one asked Faelmir, so he made no contribution. It could have been nothing. And at any rate, it hardly mattered. Could have been the Stormcloaks, snuck into the camp to kill them all, but so what if it was?

 _By the silence of the Eight,_ he thought, _is this the extent of my apathy?_

He didn't even need to ask that question.

Scipio got to his feet. "I'm going to go check it out." He unsheathed his blade, giving the other man a sober look. "You wait here."

"Will do, brother," Matius said and started to shake the cup with the dice in it.

A ghost of a frown visited Ceno's brow, but soon the handsome soldier's nonchalance seemed to catch up with him too. He shrugged, turning to anticipate Matius' toss.

Muttering something under his breath, Scipio disappeared through the flap of the tent.

"Think he'll try to split?" asked Matius in passing.

Ceno shrugged. "He _has_ been unlucky."

Faelmir rolled his eyes.

After some minutes of clattering dice, grumblings and laughs about the scores, and the sucking sounds from the men finishing their beers, no sign of Scipio returning.

Ceno tapped his finger against the tabletop. "What's taking him so long?"

"I dunno," replied Matius. "Yo, Scipio!" he yelled, never taking his eyes off his cup of dice. Ceno cringed at his vociferation. "Where'd you go, pal?"

Silence.

"Maybe he actually did bounce," said Ceno.

Matius looked at his comrade, one eyebrow raised. "You think he'd actually go AWOL over some owed gold?"

" _What_?" Ceno exclaimed. "You're the one who—ah!" He waved a frustrated hand. "Never mind. I'm going to have a look." He got up to leave.

"You're splitting too? Then who will I rob?"

"Fuck yourself, Matius. I'll get the better of you yet!"

"That's what your ma said."

Ceno just shook his head, pulled out his sword, and went for the exit. "Fool, didn't even take a torch!" he muttered. He grabbed a lantern off the game table, ignoring Matius' complaining that he wouldn't then be able to see to rig the dice, and went outside.

And then it was just the two of them, the irreverent soldier and the disconsolate priest, sitting in the silence of the tent now dimly lit only by the brazier hissing beside Faelmir. His hands still hung above it, despite already being thoroughly warmed.

Matius leaned back on his chair and turned his head to study him. "Guess it's just you and me, cleric," he said. "You play?"

Faelmir's reply was a quizzical look.

"Yeah," Matius nodded. "Didn't think so." He sighed and opened another bottle.

It was finally silent again. Perhaps Faelmir could refocus on his meditations while it lasted.

 _Where was I . . . right, Lorkhan._

Lorkhan's trickery, of course, was at the center of religious debate and musing of scholars all across the board—religious or otherwise. The way it was seen in the eyes of the mortal races was of course largely dependent upon their spiritual qualities. Men, the weak creatures that they were, largely saw his deception as an act of mercy, to grant them the chance of existing. Even if the best it seemed to have to offer them was _this_. The Mer on the other hand, saw things differently. Especially the Altmer harbored a bitter hatred against this "god", which they in truth saw as a demon keeping them entrapped in this illusionary plane of woe and misery, cutting them from their true spiritual immortality. And even though Faelmir had never fully embraced his own religious heritage and dogma, in this he largely sided with his own.

Trinimac, the chief protector of the Altmer, had proclaimed himself the relentless enemy of the deceiver whom he had himself disposed of, and of his bastard creation. But his odyssey against Nirn had not ended well, for according to the legend he had been devoured by the Daedric Prince Boethiah. And while this had not managed to destroy the god, after he'd finally emerged from the Prince's clutches, he had been baldy mangled and twisted and was reborn as the vile Malacath. To put the matter bluntly, the legend essentially claimed Malacath to be what was left once Boethiah finally shat out the now former god.

As if by a random train of association, the concept of the _Hurling Disk_ popped to Faelmir's mind. The infamous Vivec had written in one of his sermons that—

A scream stopped his thoughts cold.

"The fuck!" Matius exclaimed, immediately springing up and knocking down the table. The dice rolled onto the ground, and his beer bottle shattered into pieces on one of them.

Faelmir looked at the wild-eyed soldier who had instinctively bared his blade but otherwise looked a far-cry from militarily orderliness. The man was obviously tipsy. "What was that!" he hissed. It was not a question, for there was little room for doubt regarding the nature of the noise.

After a second it seemed to dawn on the man himself. "Ah, shit! Shit, shit, shit." He trotted nervously in place like a horse in a burning barn, until finally something like a proper soldierly attitude kicked in. It had gotten silent again, but it was obvious everything was not right. Something of the man's training seemed to slowly return to his memory; he went to grab a shield off a corner table, checked briefly that his armor sat correctly, and shook himself from head to toe to prepare for action. He then started to sidle toward the door.

"You stay here!" he snapped, shooting Faelmir a hard look. And without waiting in vain for a reply, he walked out of the tent.

Even now Faelmir could not bring himself to summon a proper emotion. It may well be the Stormcloaks, then. Were they in the habit of killing servants of the gods? It was a reasonable thing to wonder, yet the answer did not seem to mean much to him. So he might die. Beings died all the time, why should he expect to form an exception? It would happen soon or later in any case: the one great hallmark of the inevitable was its irrevocable inevitability, so why delay it.

So he indeed might die. And what then? The ascendance to Aetherius was reserved for the purest of souls, so obviously that option was off the table. Thus a recycling through the Dreamsleeve it would be for him. Which one would be the grimmer prospect: to have to start it all over again or to have to continue on just the same? Of course, it could always be there would be absolutely nothing waiting on the other side, but that somehow seemed way too good to be true.

Faelmir looked at the wall of the tent, at the place he thought Matius might be at the moment. It was dark outside, and the man had not had a light to bring with him. Now, that was as foolish a thing as the priest could imagine, that they had not been prepared with enough illumination with them.

He let out a bitter sigh. Illumination. He should be the last person to speak of such matters. After all, no matter how he might have criticized these soldiers, was he not the expert of wandering off into the dark without anything to light his path? And no matter how engulfed in gloom he imagined the paths he'd been walking so far, he felt with a heart-gripping certainly he was yet to see the full extent of it. The deepest of dark still awaited him, no matter if he should still die here today.

Smiling sourly, he stared at the canvas as if he were able to see thought it. But it was no more transparent to him than was the veil strewn in front of his eyes, the one keeping him from any sight of divine spark—in this word, or any other. And just like the darkness that stood immobile outside the tent, so was the the world he sensed lying beyond his senses, utterly devoid of celestial radiance. No matter how hard, regardless of with how pious intentions, he had strained to peer beyond the shrouds of illusion enfolding this word, all he'd ever seen was the darkest of darkness. But no light. No, never any—

And then the light came.

It was a bright flame right outside of the tent, and came with an ear-shredding crackle; a grating, tearing sound like the very air being rent. And despite his benumbed state, Faelmir started and shied back on his chair. To his immediate embarrassment, he thought he might have even let out a little yelp.

Once the light and boom faded, there was another sound; that of a man screaming. As far as sounds went, that was much easier on the ears, yet its effect on the soul was of a whole different order. Faelmir's hairs pricked up at the agony in it, like a man burned alive. No doubt the truth was not too far from the image evoked.

He was just about to wish for the sound to stop, when it was cut off by another. This one was a deafening explosion, and the world beyond the canvas was lit up like the storm-sky by a thunderbolt. For a second, before he instinctively shut his eyes, Faelmir could see the silhouetted outline of Matius, standing a few feet away from the tent with his arms raised in front of him for no protection at all. After Faelmir had closed his eyes, he heard a heavy object crash into the tent, the whole thing shaking from the impact. Then it was silent again.

He kept his eyes closed a bit longer, trying to decide whether he was actually almost disturbed by the recent turn of events. He felt a twinge of surprise, then—but at realizing he in fact _was_ disquieted, or at fully comprehending he wasn't even now, that much remained uncertain. When his eyes finally opened, the returned darkness and silence outside had amalgamated into one substance, enfolding the tent tight in its embrace. But present in it was an unmistakable disturbance rupturing the surface of the calm. Someone, albeit someone quiet, was out there.

Faelmir swallowed, kept his eyes fixed on the canvas at the point where he knew Matius' dead body had slammed just a few seconds ago, and waited.

The silence was broken by a level male voice. "You might as well come out," it said.

Faelmir said nothing, the futile question unavoidably forming in his mind.

"Yes, you," the voice answered. The laconic amusement in it was as if its owner had read his mind.

He waited a moment longer, then patted his knees and breathed out. _Delaying the inevitable, and all that._ His legs ached as he stood up and it made him wince. As he walked painstakingly past the table where the soldiers had been gambling, he glanced at the dice sitting in a puddle of spilled beer. Their added numbers totaled to seventeen.

Pressing through the flaps of the door, he blinked his eyes at the dark. The deserted military camp was pitch black, and after the light of the brazier, he was as good as blind. His sense of smell, on the other hand, was working perfectly; to some dismay he found the stench of burning flesh in the air not only filling him with rather reasonable disgust, but also reminding him of the fact that he'd not eaten for some time.

After staring at the blackness a moment, a sparkle of light appeared. From the small sparkle quickly grew a little azure sun, and Faelmir saw that it owed it origins to the uplifted hand of a figure dressed in dark, cowled robes. After the light had grown to its full magnitude, about head size, the figure lowered its hand and the little sun continued hovering in the air. He saw then that the figure was surrounded by other ones just like it. There were five of them in total.

But before he could focus on the eerie characters, Faelmir's attention went to the ones on the ground. The closest one he could already have guessed; the charred corpse of Matius lay in a crumble just by the tent. He'd been scorched unrecognizable and was still smoking, hovering all around him the appalling tang of a pork roast. Farthest away was Scipio in a pool of blood, his left arm propped against a birch tree like he'd been trying to use it for support. Between the two, then, was dead Ceno, sprawled on his stomach, a visible puncture wound through his back.

Despite that these three men, who had just minutes ago been irritating him with their noisy drinking, gambling, and moronic joshing, had now been permanently silenced; and even though their killers, who not only greatly outnumbered him but without a speck of doubt possessed a far greater magical prowess than him, stood right in front of him, Faelmir still couldn't say he felt afraid. He had neither loved or hated the soldiers, and though in general he viewed senseless killing as a terrible waste, he felt nothing save for mild revulsion looking at their dead cadavers. He didn't feel much more as he switched his attention to the figures standing around them.

Two of the people, a male one who'd been the one to ignite the magelight, and a female one at the left of him, approached Faelmir.

"Evening, priest." This was the male one, the same one who'd called Faelmir earlier. He gave the impression of something of a leader.

Faelmir didn't say anything.

The assumed leader motioned his hand at the dead soldiers. "I regret we had to barge in like this." There wasn't a trace of regret in his glacial voice. "We came here in search of something, and frankly these gentlemen were in our way." He tilted his head and Faelmir saw a smile: a ghastly, grotesque thing. "Then on the other hand, they were weaker than us, and the weak must perish in front of the strong. So demands our master."

Faelmir felt the stir of curiosity. "Your master?"

"We serve Lord Molag Bal"

He couldn't help to recoil. Molag Bal, perhaps the single most malevolent of his kind, was the Daedric Prince of domination and enslavement. The Harvester of Souls. The Lord of Brutality. The King of Rape. Like Mehrunes Dagon a couple hundred years ago, Molag Bal had also in his turn tried to claim Nirn for himself, to merge it with his own plane of Oblivion, the Coldharbour. This had happened during the Second Era, over a eight hundred years ago, but that didn't mean the dark lord had stopped meddling with the affairs of mortals.

And _im_ mortals . . . It occurred to Faelmir that Molag Bal was also known as the creator and the patron deity of vampires. Is that what these people were? He impulsively had to wrinkle his nose. Just like everyone, he hated the foul creatures.

Another unsightly smile played on the lips of the leader."We are not vampires," he said. Faelmir wondered if the man was indeed able to read his mind and tried to clench up his mind to the best of his ability. "We are merely humble servants of our lord," the eldrich figure finished with a little obeisant bow.

"What are you looking for from here?" Faelmir didn't want to speak, but was compelled to ask.

"We're here in an attempt to solve a mystery," the man replied without delay. "To find out what the powerful signs of late mean. Find out what it is we must now do."

Faelmir frowned. "What signs?"

"Have you not felt it, priest?" said the woman by the leader's side. She peeled back her cowl, and Faelmir could see she was quite young. There was a tortured and emaciated look to her face, but a bright flame burning in her eyes of different color, one blue and the other green. "Just a couple days ago. Something like a great shift in the continuum of time and reality. A massive strain of labor: like a wound torn open, or like a door being forced shut. A tremendous amount of power and will! Upon inspecting it, there can be no doubt it was daedric by origin."

She smiled, and much like her frozen voice was a mach to the man's, her expression would have been enough to scare small creatures to death. "Then, of course, there are those who have a very different interpretation. People now widely believe that the Dragons have returned." It was plain to see what she herself thought about it.

The man snorted. "Yes, well. The masses can choose to believe whatever that they want. There's no doubt they would greet their enslavers with joy; just like they pledge loyalty to their precious _Empire_." He spat the word like the most foul curse. Then he smiled again. "Just the same, Molag Bal will bend them under his yoke. They will get what they want. What they deserve."

An uneasy twinge caused by the implications of of the man's word prodded Faelmir to keep up the dialogue. "What are you talking about?"

The man looked pleased that he'd asked. "We believe it's our Master behind all this, giving us a sign of his return. He will once more attempt to absorb Nirn, return our world into the bosom of Oblivion. As it was always meant to be."

"You've been eating too much Skooma!" Faelmir said. "Everybody knows that Martin Septim sealed the gates of Oblivion forever!"

He had of course, like anyone visiting Imperial City, spent significant amounts of time simply staring at the petrified form of Akatosh, the Dragon God of Time—or rather his avatar fueled by the the last in line of the Septim Emperors who'd given his life in the process—standing in the middle of the Temple of the One as a testament to the threat now eternally evaded. Or so he had always believed. Only now, seeing the mocking smile on the lips the man, looking as if he'd heard a stupid thing spewed by a child, did it occur to him he'd not thought to question this. After all: he'd already all but thrown away the gods, and if he no longer believed in them, why should he believe their promises?

"I know you believe this, priest," the man echoed his thought. "As does everyone else. But even if everybody believes in a lie, it doesn't make it any more true, now does it?"

A silence settled upon them. Doubt and, surprisingly, trepidation was slowly stirring up within Faelmir, and the two figures studied him with expressions like they knew precisely what was happening.

The heavy hush was broken by one of the other figures behind the two. "One is still alive," he said, pressing his foot in the wound in Ceno's back. The soldier made a powerless and agonized groan.

"Good," the leader said. "Keep him that way. We'll take him with us." He looked at Faelmir with a sinister smile. "This one too."

Another emotion appeared in Faelmir's heart. But it wasn't fear. It was anger. "Why don't you just kill me?"

The man raised a brow. " _Kill_ you? Why? You have no use to us dead. Alive, on the other hand . . . "

"I see," Faelmir replied coldly. "I know your kind. You're going to drag me with you, to get your twisted pleasure out of torturing—"

"No, no," the leader interrupted. "You've got us all wrong. Well, partly, at least. For you we have other plans. We can use a man such as yourself."

 _Use_ him?

When Faelmir failed to find a response, the woman took over. "Do not deny it," she said. "I can see it in your eyes. You've never felt right with what they've taught you. You've spent your entire life worshiping false gods, and the truth has just started to dawn on you. Anu is impotent, as is his wretched spawn Anui-El. Sithis is the true source of divinity, the true creator. He is the truth, and Lord Molag Bal is the purest wielder of his will. We set out in search the guidance of our master, and he pointed us . . ." She paused, then smiled. "Here."

They were both staring at him, then, anticipating his reply.

 _You fools! You worshipers of demons! Get away from me, you spawns of evil! I will rather die than listen to any more of your insane ravings! Just kill me and get it over with._ Faelmir knew that should have been his reply. That was his conditioning speaking. Saying so now would have made his old mentor proud.

But his old mentor was dead. Murdered in his own bed.

Yet that _should_ have been his reply. He almost gave it, too, but the words were dead before they reached his plica vocalis. Instead he croaked, "I won't be any kind of help to you."

The man narrowed his eyes, his faint smile intact. "That remains to be seen."

The woman was not smiling anymore, and instead examined Faelmir with burning eyes. "Well, priest. What is your reply?" Her bearing made it clear she wasn't going to ask many more times.

As if feeling the need to clarify what the question was, the man added, "Will you join us, walk with us the dark path of our master towards unparalleled glory and unimaginable power?" He paused and regarded Faelmir with a look laden with meaning. "Will you reject the Divines?"

He turned his gaze from the anticipatory daedra worshipers to the dead soldiers on the ground. He couldn't have even begun to count how many dead bodies he'd seen in the course of his long life. And not just soldiers, either. Priests, public officials, civilians; men, women, children. A war, a raid, a common robbery. The innocent dying over the power hunger of some who never truly realize the full consequences of their own actions—who couldn't care even if they did. And then of course there were those who simply enjoyed the suffering of others, reveled in the fact that they got to cause it. And the more vulnerable, the more helpless their victim was, the better for them. Women and children and elderly. Tortured, raped, slaughtered. It didn't take much of an imagination to envision a world such as this as orchestrated by a demon. Plenty of demons sure walked on it as it was.

What was the main principle of Molag Bal again: that the weak must perish in front of the strong? Well, was that not the precise principle _this_ world operated by? Clearly it belonged to him already.

Faelmir looked at the sparkle of magelight now fading out. Such sources of illumination served a purpose: to underline the darkness around, to make it seem more deep, more despondent—even more bottomless, all-encompassing, and terrible. They were the dreadful sweet dreams after which one woke up to the nightmare of reality. Above him the stars fought for visibility from behind the jostling dark-brown clouds blown around frantically by the brisk midnight gust. Directly above his head loomed the four-starred constellation of the Serpent. It was his birth-sign.

The stars. What were they? There were those who believed them to be portals to Aetherius, created when the god Magnus fled upon the creation of Nirn. Faelmir himself had always thought them as the windows through which the gods looked impotently upon this wretched creation. This dreadful fever-dream of existence. Maybe they really were there, just watching. Never once doing anything to lend a helping hand, to stop all the evil.

With his lip curling, Faelmir lowered his gaze. It settled upon the man he had supposed to be the leader, but of which he was no longer certain. The look on the hard-featured face remained expectant.

Faelmir regarded the hooded figure blankly, once again feeling nothing.

"What Divines?" he said.

The man's lips spread into a dark little smile. "Yes," he mused. "Indeed."

And just like that, everything that needed to be said, had been. The robed people turned to leave. One of them picked up the faintly groaning form of Ceno, slung the man over his shoulder, and they started to file out of the dark of the camp, into the gloom of the surrounding woods. Without a question and no one prompting him, Faelmir followed.

As he went deeper into the grim forest unknown to him, into yet another unlit abyss, a strange sort of disoriented haze descended upon him. And as he closed his eyes, he felt as if a great shadow fell on them all. He felt as if the world was about to be devoured in flames and ash. As if the whole of reality as he knew it was about to be wiped out. Like some immensely powerful, malignant being was going to grind it all under its boot.

 _Good_ , he thought. _Let it!_


End file.
